The Year after the Armada, and Other Historical Studies

by Martin A. S. Hume

The next day the English began to ship their artillery and baggage and made ready to depart, after again unsuccessfully trying to fire the upper town. They managed indeed to burn down every house in the lower town, and they set sail on May 9 (O.S.), 1589.

In the meanwhile utter dismay reigned at Madrid. What was left of the fleet was acknowledged to be powerless for defence, and none knew for certain where the blow was to fall. The accounts from Corunna were intercepted by the Government, and were surmised to be worse than they really were; but still the general opinion was not far out in supposing that Drake could not do much permanent harm on the open places on the coast, but would eventually attack either Lisbon or Cadiz. Fernando de Toledo was appointed commander-in-chief, but soldiers could not be got together.[[23]] Pietro de Medici was hastily ordered to raise 6,000 mercenaries in Italy; and Contarini writes from Madrid to the Doge: "It is true that for want of soldiers they have adopted a plan which may prove more hurtful than helpful; they have enrolled Portuguese, and so have armed the very people whom they have cause to fear, but perhaps they think that as they have destroyed the leaders they have made themselves safe."

Norris was almost as much dreaded as Drake himself, and his skill and daring suggested to the terrified Court that he might intend to cut through the neck of land upon which Corunna stands, and entirely isolate the town, which he might then make into a great depot for an English fleet. Philip, we are told, was in great anxiety, "not so much on account of the loss he suffers as for the insult which he feels that he has received in the fact that a woman, mistress of only half an island, with the help of a corsair and a common soldier, should have ventured on so arduous an enterprise, and dared to molest so powerful a sovereign."

The bitterest blow of all to Philip was the knowledge that Spain's impotence was now patent to the world, and that the mere presence of Drake was sufficient to paralyse all resistance. When the English force re-embarked at Corunna, says Contarini, they were not even molested, so glad were the besieged to be rid of him at any cost. "Whilst Drake was at Corunna he was so strongly entrenched that he suffered no loss at all. If he had remained a few days longer the place would have fallen for the reliefs were not as ready as was rumoured. Drake occupied the place called the fishmarket. He knocked down houses, seized cattle, killed soldiers, released officers on ransom, and by pillage of the suburbs and the burning of monasteries seemed to care more for plunder than for glory."[[24]] As we have seen, in fact, Drake's sole reason for going to Corunna at all against his mistress' orders was to satisfy with loot the mutinous rabble on board his ships, but of this the Spaniards were naturally ignorant.

The fleet sailed out of Corunna on the 9th of May, leaving smoking ruins behind them for many miles around; but contrary winds drove the ships back again and again. At last, on the 13th of May, the truant Swiftsure hove in sight, "to the great delight of us all," bringing the Earl of Essex, Sir Roger Williams, Master Walter Devereux ("the Earl's brother, a gentleman of wonderful great hope"), Sir Philip Butler ("who hath always been most inward with him"), and Sir Edward Wingfield.

However glad the men of lower rank may have been to see the dashing young nobleman, Drake and Norris can hardly have been overjoyed. They knew by this time that Elizabeth was in earnest about it, and that the purse-strings would be drawn tighter, and the censure be stricter, whilst her errant favourite was with the expedition; and some inkling of this even reached the writer of the English account of the expedition. "The Earle," he says, "having put himself into the journey against the opinion of the world, and as it seemed, to the hazard of his great fortune, though to the great advancement of his reputation (for as the honourable carriage of himself towards all men doth make him highlie esteemed at home, so did his exceeding forwardness in all services make him to be wondered at amongst us) who I say put off ... because he would avoide the importunity of messengers that were daily sent for his return and some other causes more secret to himself."

The earl's first request was that he should always be allowed to lead the vanguard of the army; "which was easilie granted unto him, being so desirous to satisfie him in all things": and thenceforward to the end of the expedition he marched at the head with Major-General Sir Roger Williams, who seemed, by the way, "not one penny the worse" for her Majesty's anathemas.

Early in the afternoon of May 16th (O.S.) the fleet cautiously approached the town of Peniche, in Portugal. Drake had learnt on his way that a great galleon from the Indies with a million crowns in gold had taken refuge under the guns of the fortress, and doubtless hoped to net so big a prize. But the Archduke Albert in Lisbon was also looking anxiously for the gold, and sent his galleys, under Bazan, to bring the galleon into the Tagus just before the arrival of the English at Peniche. The town of Peniche was held by Gonsalves de Ateide with a body of Portuguese who could not be trusted, and some Castilian reinforcements sent to him under Pedro de Guzman; but the fortress was commanded by a Captain Araujo, who was known to be secretly in favour of Dom Antonio. Here it was determined to land the force, and Ateide drew up his men at the landing-place before the fortress and opened fire upon the ships as they entered the bay. On the other side of the harbour, half a league off, the surf was running high, and a landing there was looked upon as impracticable, so that the shore was left undefended. Suddenly, when least expected by the Spaniards, Norris began to land his men on this side. Hot-headed Essex would not even wait for his boat to reach land, but jumped into the beating surf breast high with Sir Roger Williams and a band of gentlemen, and so struggled ashore to protect the landing of the rest. By the time Ateide and his 350 Castilians had reached the spot 2,000 English had landed on the beach of Consolation as it was called. Some slight show of resistance was made, and fifteen Spaniards fell at the push of the English pike; but the Castilians were out-numbered and nearly surrounded, and were forced to retire precipitately inland to a neighbouring hamlet to await reinforcements from Torres Vedras. When Norris had landed 12,000 or 13,000 men, with the loss of several boatloads in the surf, but without further molestation from the Spaniards, he summoned the Portuguese commandant of the fortress to surrender. He replied that he refused to surrender to the English, but would willingly do so to his lawful king, Dom Antonio. So the poor pretender, "bigger of spirit than of body," landed with his son Manoel, and his faithful bodyguard of a hundred Portuguese, to be received once more on his own land as a sovereign. He found all things ready for him: his canopy of state erected, plate for his table set out, and kneeling subjects seeking for his smiles. He spoke smoothly and fairly, we are told, to the country people, taking nothing from them, but giving, or at least promising, much, and assuring them all of his protection.

But if their new sovereign was chary of oppressing them, no such scruples afflicted their Castilian masters. My Portuguese diarist says that the Spaniards retaliated for Araujo's treachery in surrendering Peniche by stealing everything belonging to the Portuguese they could lay their hands upon, and he cites one case in which they took the large sum of two thousand crowns from one of the most influential friends of the Spanish cause. "But," he says, apologetically, "in confused times such as these soldiers will act so."

Dom Antonio's bodyguard was armed with muskets and pikes from the castle, and here the poor King kept his rough-and-ready Court for two days. He was tenacious of his regal dignity, and had many a little wrangle with the English about the scant ceremony with which they treated him. But greater disappointments were yet in store for him. The friars and peasants flocked in to salute their native king, but, alas, Antonio hoped and looked in vain for the coming of the lords and gentry from whom he expected so much. Wily Philip had been once more too cunning for his enemy. At the first whisper of the expedition he had banished to distant places in his own dominions every Portuguese noble—seventy of them in all—who was not pledged hard and fast to the Castilian cause. One of Antonio's false friends, too, had escaped at Corunna, and had gone straight to Philip and divulged all the pretender's plans and the names of his supporters still in Portugal who were to help him into Lisbon. Their shrift, as may be supposed, was a short one, and when Antonio came to his kingdom he found none but monks and clowns to greet him. Such of the gentry as he approached were usually too panic-stricken to side with him, seeing the fate of others of their class, and my Portuguese scoffs at the insolence of the idea that Antonio and the English could hold Lisbon, even if they won it against all the might of Spain, or of the common Portuguese rising without the "fidalgos," and courting the ruin that would befall them if the "heretics" got the upper hand without the fidalgos to restrain them.